Smiling under Buses

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

George Galloway shows his Respect

In arant about the proposed new Gaelic channel by the BBC, he only managess to call the Gaelic language 'obscure' twice in the artice, which was dissapointing.

Language is a living thing or nothing at all if you ask me. And the rest of us, by a stroke of luck, are in possession of a tongue worth the weight of Ben Nevis in gold.

This is often an argument used against any money being spent on the Welsh language, that it shouldn't be supported in any way by the state and that it should be left to fight it out with other languages, which is an argument that one can understand. But then he goes on to say:

The English language is our greatest asset and the government spends far too little spreading it even wider.

The money spend [sic] on Gaels and their obscure language could be spent by the British Council teaching, for example, the people of China to speak English with infinitely more returns.

Which is a total contradiction of what he just said. A language like Gaelic shouldn't be supported financially, but the English language should. He then tries another trick favoured by the language haters, which is to use the presence of immigrants (Galloway's political career is based on this anyway).

There are more people who speak Punjabi in Scotland than have the Gaelic. Can you imagine the outcry if the government gave £50 per week per head to subsidise Lahore TV?

And more people speak Polish in Scotland than speak Gaelic but Gdansk TV could only dream of such a subsidy.

As we know over the last few years the nationalists have stepped up their attempts to impose conformity and their bigotted ideology on our locale, they will be using St David's Day to impose the idea that Wales is a nation cosily united - rich and poor - against English oppression and waving their flags. They will be attempting to construct a 'welsh identity' that never existed and various other ideas that mystify social reality, class division and block the forming of genuine grassroots culture based on solidarity and diy principles.

Monday, February 11, 2008

Cardiff Web Scene Meetup, 26.2.08

Hey there. Cardiff Geeks was recently formed due to the common feeling amongst many passionate geeks in Wales that there was a lack of community between them.

We are comprised of researchers, computer scientists, web professionals and enthusiasts though are open to just about anyone who has an interest in the topics we discuss.

While there's a strong (but very small) on-line community of Welsh speakers, usually referred to as the Rhithfro, there's no obvious Welsh (i.e about Wales) on-line scene, neither social or for business, something I find quite frustrating, but I suppose it's not all that surprising. Hopefully, this will change.

I wasn't sure if Cardiff Geeks was still going, but I received a Facebook invite on the weekend (ok, so there might well be a point to the damn thing after all), to attend the Cardiff Web Scene Meetup at Cafe Floyd on Tuesday the 26th of Feb. Unfortunately I teach Welsh on Tuesday night, but I might pop in afterwards if I'm not too late and tired. Anyone else fancy it?